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Wind energy and power generated from a wind source has received much attention as a renewable energy alternative. Harnessing wind to extract the “energy” from it has been going on since ancient times, in one form or another. Take the sails on a sailing vessel, for example, or the Dutch windmill that operates to grind grain. At the conclusion of 2007, generators that were wind-powered accounted for 94.1 GW of capacity worldwide.

Wind power accounted for only one percent of the electricity produced overall worldwide as of the end of 2007. However, wind power is responsible for 19% of Denmark’s electricity generation, 9% of the usage in Spain and Portugal, 6% utilization in Germany, and 6% in Ireland. The trend is that these numbers will continue to grow and spread throughout more countries each year. According to the Global Wind Energy Council News, statistics show that wind power use has increased more than five times between 2000 and 2007.

Here’s the good environmental news about wind generation. Wind energy needs NO FUEL to operate and produces NO EMISSIONS related to the process of producing electricity. It does not create any carbon dioxide, mercury, sulfur dioxide, or any type of air pollution. It simply uses the breeze blowing through the air to operate generators to produce electricity.

It is true, at the present time, that creating wind power generation plants incurs the necessary materials of steel, aluminum, and concrete. The means by which these materials are transported to the location they need to be generally involves the use of fossil fuels in transportation. However, research has been done on the period of time that is needed to level the effects and produce a zero-sum total effect (the positives of the wind turbine producing energy versus the negatives of resources consumed in construction and fossil fuels in transportation) of energy usage. Some reports put it at 9 months of wind turbine operation; some at just a little over one year. From then on, it’s all “gravy,” as they say, on the side of positive effects that the wind turbine power generation offers. Offshore wind turbine facilities “pay back” any adverse effects sooner than land facilities because offshore facilities generally tend to have a higher generation capacity and a higher production rate.

There have been some complaints regarding wind turbines and the danger to birds, but even the Audubon Society has come out in support of wind turbines and state that more birds are killed as a result of other human activities than are likely to be dealt a fatal blow by a wind turbine. Cars, hunting, high-rise buildings, and power lines are more likely to cause a higher incidence of death to birds than wind turbines.



Sherry Irvin
on behalf of the
BascoTec Internet Limited
Technologie Park 13
33100 Paderborn
Germany

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